In modern logistics processes, there are increasingly transport operations in which articles are not transported individually but as what is known as bulk material, also referred to as “bulk cargo” in the industry. In the process, a large number of individual articles are loaded or stacked in bulk in large containers.
While transporting articles as bulk material is highly efficient economically as regards just the transport process, the further processing of such articles sometimes causes difficulties logistically.
It is of essential importance for modern logistics chains that the loads of articles which are transported to handling facilities can be removed from their transport containers in as little time as possible with as little damage to the articles as possible, and can be transferred, resorted and output again in the handling center.
To this end, it is necessary to separate the bulk material for it to be possible to individually process predetermined quantities of the material or individual units of the material in a targeted manner. A typical application for this is the processing of packages or parcels in what are known as parcel centers.
Systems for unloading bulk material containers, for example on load carriers, and transferring the bulk material to conveying systems are known, for example from WO 2013/087413 A1. With the system described therein, the bulk material is already advantageously transferred out of the bulk material container and into the conveying system in a short time and in an undamaged form.
However, there is still a need to achieve as efficient separation as possible of the bulk material being transferred.
Known problems in facilities for separating bulk material are generally considered to be that the uncontrolled inflow of bulk material from the bulk material container causes backlogs of articles between the inlet into the system and the outlet, and these compromise the logistics process.
Against this background, the invention was based on the problem of specifying an apparatus of the type designated at the beginning, which allows as efficient and disruption-free provision of separated units of bulk material as possible.